Art in the Time of Corporate Greed
Cultural Tourism, Sponsorship Ethics, and
the Sydney Biennale Boycott 2014
By Ruth Skilbeck 18.2.2014
Multinationals, national art prizes, national
identities, global capitalism…
Property development (intellectual and real
estate), universities (as real estate, property development opportunities, new
building, student accommodation, international student fees), education, banks,
financial institutions, telcos, defence, and now asylum seeker detention camps,
prisons which are in breach of international human rights, for torture, this
money being used to quell (potential) dissent in the art world, and society and
culture, by syphoning it into sponsorship of artists in Australia, who are kept
in a state of penury, so they will have to take whatever support and
sponsorship they can get, as, the idea is, they need it to survive. The idea
also is that they need the grants from these sources, as tokens of their
“success” as artists. There is an attempt to build a prestige around
sponsorship from these dubious sources. What calculating machine-minds thought
of that? The new captains of Academia, Australian big businesses, who are the
fascistic industrialists of yesterday, and the new global order, who have taken
over the universities, and are attempting to take over and imprison the art
world.
The “universities” are assisting (following
the new orders of the new captains in control) by erasing critical thinking
from the curriculum, and cultural history of colonialism. By ending tenure
track jobs and making all academics, or new academics, as many as possible,
casual, so they are all in a state of financial need, and have to keep working
in a system which they despise, as it is oppressing them, (not allowing them a
secure future, just as refugees are only granted a ‘temporary protection visa’
this operates in the same way of controlling and oppressing) and at the same
time, the “universities” (or a small group of people who have seized control of
the universities) are spending billions
on building new buildings, instead of paying the teachers, lecturers, they are
making a fortune from property development on campuses, building student
accommodation, which is rented out at high prices to the international students
whose fees are exorbitant.
Sydney Biennale has become a showcase of
cultural tourism and image massage, for the elites, sponsors, big business, and
government. This is happening at the same time, in the same era, that art
funding has been cut and art courses axed from tertiary education, across NSW;
and that artists individually and collectively are kept in a state of
impoverishment and penury, dependent on the handouts and “support” of the corporations
and institutional “education” culture that oppresses them.
A new book of independent scholarship and
art criticism on the history of the sponsorship of the Sydney Biennale, in
international contexts of the rise of art philanthropy, corporate sponsorship,
and cultural tourism in the global era (the past 40 years): working title Art in the Time of Corporate Greed by
Ruth Skilbeck, will be published by Postmistress Press.
Ruth Skilbeck, PhD, is a widely published
art and culture researcher and author, she has worked as an art critic, arts
journalist, university lecturer and researcher, and is co author of Cultural Landscapes of Tourism in New South
Wales and Victoria (Cooperative Research Centre 2008) a multi-university
research study, for which she was author of a case study on the Art Gallery of
New South Wales, she has also published many articles on arts related issues in
international scholarly journals, and in the mainstream arts media, in
Australia, the UK and Ireland.
Art in a Time of Corporate Sponsorship and
Greed:
A History of the Biennale of Sydney
Introduction
History
Broad historical overview of sponsorship of
art
Case studies
Sydney Biennale- 41 years from Beginnings
in 1973 to the Boycott 2014
art prizes
Artists working with these themes
Coming soon on this website.
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